deepstash
Beta
Why Tracking Your Habits Will Make You More Productive, Consistent And Successful
Effectively Tracking Habits
- You can use tracking apps, sheets or a journal to track your behavior.
- Decide which habits you want to track.
- Decide on a timeframe for tracking.
- Set a target for how many times you want to successfully follow each habit in your chosen timeframe.
- Decide on which days you want to do which habits, or even schedule it in your calendar.
- Mark successful and unsuccessful habit executions.
127 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
4
Key Ideas
Stop Lying Yourself
People tend to let themselves off the hook and take the easy way out much more often than they realize. Often, we hold on to an image or identity that we have of ourselves and let that image distort our reality.
When you track yourself you have factual evidence of your slip-ups, making you less likely to mindlessly justify them or pretend they didn’t happen.
Being Productive Through Tracking
When you don’t track your habits you’re more likely to talk yourself out of certain activities when you don’t feel like doing them. Tracking reminds and confronts you with your failures, effectively punishing you.
Tracking also gamefies your habits, providing extra motivation to being consistent. That sets a chain reaction of benefits in motion that starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Effectively Tracking Habits
- You can use tracking apps, sheets or a journal to track your behavior.
- Decide which habits you want to track.
- Decide on a timeframe for tracking.
- Set a target for how many times you want to successfully follow each habit in your chosen timeframe.
- Decide on which days you want to do which habits, or even schedule it in your calendar.
- Mark successful and unsuccessful habit executions.
Success Rate
A success rate gives you a number that informs your performance analysis. You will shortly be able to see if you’ve improved or not.
Calculate your ‘success rate’ to measure your progress over time. The formula is: Success Rate = (Completed Amount / Target Amount) * 100%.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
4
Key Ideas
Excuse-making
It's a defense mechanism you use in the battle between your positive self-identity and the common challenges of everyday life.
This habit comes down to an inherent need to protect your...
The self-serving bias
It encourages you to claim your successes and to deflect your failures.
When something good happens, you take the credit, but when something bad happens, you blame it on something out of your control.
Common types of excuses
- Lies: This is one of the worst types of excuses—a straight-up lie.
- Self-handicapping excuses: Such as “I don’t have the skills to do that”, or “That’s not my job.”
- Blame-shifting excuses: Instead of putting the blame on your lack of abilities, you accuse external factors for your missteps or lack of performance.
one more idea
6
Key Ideas
Build good habits in two minutes
The “two-minute rule” has two parts.
First, if something takes less than two minutes, do it now. Next, start building new habits for two minutes at a time. The rule for this is: When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. The idea is to make your habits as easy to start as possible.
Think of these “two-minute habits” as gateway habits that will lead to your overarching goal.
Complete tasks in batches
It takes time to get into a rhythm to work on a task. Instead of constantly starting and stopping that process, it’s better to keep your rhythm going by bundling similar tasks together.
By doing this, you avoid interruptions and prevents himself from procrastinating.
3 more ideas
5
Key Ideas
Habits You Should Track
Factors to consider when choosing a new habit to track:
- Motivation: choose a habit you personally care about. If you pick a habit out of a sense of obligation, your motivation wil...
Tackle One Behavior At a Time
You can’t fully focus on any behavior if you try to establish several at once.
Doing so risks overloading your willpower and your habits may end up competing for priority.
“Stack” Your Habits
The best way to turn a behavior into a habit is to use a trigger to remind yourself to do it. Your trigger needs to be something you always do anyway. Anything you already do without thinking works.
As you build new habits, you create new triggers for yourself and stack a new habit onto it. Each existing habit acts as a trigger to remind you to complete the next one until it becomes natural to do both together.
2 more ideas